I spent 7 days in the wild and this is what I learned #1

Written on July 15, 2025

I just got back from a 7 days wildcamping and kayaking trip in Sweden, an experience I had been dreaming of for months. A lot happened on that trip. Not so much outside of me, but mostly inside of me. I have been sharing some photos and videos on social media and it occurred to me, from messages I received from friends, that it looked like I had the trip of a lifetime. Well, let me tell you: it was, but not in the way you would expect.

I thought that being in the wild, away from humanity and civilisation, would be the ultimate way to connect with nature. I expected to feel unmeasurable levels of peace, harmony and beauty. I assumed my heart would barely be able to hold the beauty of the wild and untouched nature. I thought I would spend a week in heaven on earth.

The gap between expectations and reality couldn’t have been bigger.

It was hard. Physically, mentally and emotionally. What I thought would be a week of exploring the beauty and wildness of places (mostly) untouched by humans, turned out to be a week of kayaking my inner rivers and camping in unknown places within myself.

Let me start at the beginning. If you have been following me on social media, you know I have been deep diving into the topic nature connection for a while now. Last year I became a certified forest bathing guide, moved into a cabin in the forest and created Nature School, an online program to guide people into a deeper relationship with the more-than-human-world, remembering the language of Earth, and coming back home to their own nature. You think that an outdoor camping experience would perfectly suit me and my interests. Turns out, it was not. I absolutely loathed sleeping in a tent, the lack of comfort, feeling dirty all the time, no shower or toilet, and being subjected to heavy winds and rain all day and night (lol).

As I am camping/outdoor newbie, you might think, why do something so extreme to begin with? Let me tell you, that question went through my head on repeat from the first to the last day. I felt so much excitement for this experience when I booked it and looking back on my motivations for going on the trip, I realised my soul led me to this experience to teach me something important.

Since a few years I have these ‘visions’ of a reality where people live in harmony with themselves and each other. A world filled with peace, harmony, beauty and abundance, where all beings are happy and free. I didn’t know exactly how this world would look like, but I could feel this reality very clearly. Especially while being in nature, I felt I was in this reality already. The feelings of harmony and peace, the complete lack of fear, judgements and scarcity, was truly medicine for my soul. I started to ask a question in my heart: how could I create this world? There was a deep knowing emerging from within me: that I would find the answers to that question in nature. That Earth and all beings from the more-than-human world knew how to live together in harmony and that they could teach me the ways of nature.

So into nature I went. I didn’t just spend time in nature, I spend time with nature. I learned to slow down, to tune into the rhythms and seasons of nature, I practiced become still, to sit in silence and open up my heart and mind to communication with all living beings. I learned a new way of being. It’s still hard to put into words the magic I experience and how this has changed me and the way I feel (about myself). I hope to share more about this in other blogposts, but let me stay on topic for this one. (P.s. if you want to experience this for yourself, I invite you to join Nature School!)

Being with nature made me feel so good, helped me accept and love myself and completely changed the way I perceive and experience life. To truly feel I am interconnected with everything that lives, that I am seen by nature and perfect the way I am, is truly priceless. Isn’t that the goal in life anyway, to feel good? All I wanted was to be with nature, because in nature I felt the peace, beauty and connection that I had been missing all my life.

What I experienced in nature, the deep belonging and unity, all faded away to the background as soon as I returned to ‘the human world’. Since I was young I have had a hard time forgiving humanity for all the harm we do to each other. Many of my early life experiences and personal relationships with other humans made me close myself up for connection as it felt too unsafe and painful. Building a deeper connection with Earth and all of nature has been so incredibly healing for me, but it wasn’t until this trip that I fully understood that humans are part of nature, and that nature connection includes human connection.

In the wilderness I learned that distancing ourselves from the human world creates seperation just as much as when we distance ourselves from the more-than-human world.

The version of me that booked this trip, was the version of me that thought I needed to distance myself from the human world, to live a simple life completely emerged in nature, far away from civilisation. I had put plants/animals/minerals in the ‘good’ box and humans in the ‘bad’ box. The version of me that booked this trip, was full of anger and judgement toward humanity for the violence and destruction we cause towards nature and each other.

I thought the answer to creating my dream reality, was to emerge myself in nature and go as far away as possible from where humans were causing destruction and violence.

Turns out, she was wrong. Hours and hours of watching the reflections on the surface of the lake and sitting with tree friends, helped me connect with a part of myself that could see a truth I realize Earth has been communicating to me for a while now. A sentence I have been repeating to myself and in Nature School: humans are part of nature. Away from the human world, I suddenly understood the meaning of this sentence fully. We are part of nature, we belong in nature, and we ARE nature. We cannot separate ourselves from the natural world. I finally realised that humans are as good, as beautiful and wonderful as I perceive the more-than-human world to be. I now see the beauty and importance of humanity taking their rightful place in the web of life.

The answer to living together in harmony is NOT to step away from the human world, but to learn to include the human world in the more-than-natural world.

What I learned, and which may be my biggest personal life lesson for this current incarnation, is that nature and humans are the same, that it’s about finding a way of living in harmony with each other, and to be able to do that, we need to return to nature within ourselves. What I feel when I am with nature, the pure and high frequencies of harmony, beauty, connection and love, exists within us too. The natural world mirrors back the virtues of our own hearts. That is what nature is teaching us. Nature can bring us home to who we really are in our essence. When we remember that the beauty, freedom and harmony we feel in nature, exists within our own hearts, we can let go of the illusion of seperation. We can let go of fear and scarcity. We can accept ourselves and each other fully. And we can live together in harmony as our unique and wild selves.

So this was one of the two major lessons of this trip (the other one will get its blogpost). I spent 7 days in the wild and came back home with my heart full of love for the one life form I went away from: the beautiful human being. I keep spiralling back to the same truth, that nature connection is all about embracing and embodying our own human nature. Not just as a species, but also as individual beings. More than ever, I am excited to keep exploring my own inner world and my own inner guidance, intuition, desires and dreams. I also feel very excited about guiding others into connecting with nature so they can go on this journey themselves. So together we can return home, to the place within our hearts, to the ocean of love and light, and pour this over ourselves, over each other, into this world, so together, we can create heavenly realities on Earth.